Posts Tagged ‘technology’

The use of health monitors and fitness trackers have exploded in recent years — but expect the next frontier in wearable technologies to be in the workplace. The implications for worker safety and productivity are promising. While Google first introduced its revolutionary Glass to consumers, the current marketing direction is aimed at custom work applications.
One example of this is Patrick Jackson, a firefighter in North Carolina’s Rocky Mountain fire department: This Firefighter Built His Own Google Glass App And It’s Saving Lives.
Jackson is also a member of the Google Glass Explorer program and has developed an app that displays incoming emergency dispatches, shows maps of where incidents are, nearest fire hydrants, and even building plans. You can see a brief demo of Glass at work in the short clip, below. In addition, “Jackson is also working on a CPR assist app for Glass, measuring the speed of compressions, and whether you need to speed up or slow down based on sensors that detect head movement. He’s teaming with a Michigan startup called team (evermed) during his days off from the department, where he spends 10 days per month working grueling 24-hour shifts.”

The article also suggest another work safety application in DriveSafe, a Google Glass app that uses infrared sensors to detect when you doze off and to issue alarms to wake you and direct you to the next rest area.PC World takes a look at other potential workplace applications for smartglasses , noting that, “The future of smartglasses will be realized by a factory worker operating a 3000-pound stamp press, not a gamer stomping on virtual-reality bad guys. Face computers will be all about scanning bar codes on cardboard boxes, not scanning tourist attractions for augmented reality overlays.” They present a variety of work scenarios, from hands free scanning and troubleshooting to safety applications.FierceCIO explores the topic further in Making wearables a good fit for workplace safety. They discuss potential safety applications and suggest that gaining optimal value from wearable devices will require IT departments to innovate with software applications, data management and administrative protocols and policies.
We’re really just at the threshold of wearables in the workplace. To see more of the opportunities, this excellent Deloitte University Press primer by Shehryar Khan and Evangeline Marzec on Wearables is helpful in exploring the potential of everything from productivity, training and worker safety:

“Wearables’ value comes from introducing technology into previously prohibitive environments–where safety, logistics, or even etiquette have constrained traditional technology solutions. Wearables can be the first seamless way to enable workers with digital information–especially where hands-free utility offers a clear advantage. For example, using wearables, workers in harsh environmental conditions can access data without removing gloves or create records without having to commit data to memory and then moving to a sheltered workstation.”

In his recent column A Workers’ Comp App Store? in Risk & Insurance, our friend Peter Rousmaniere poses the question, “When will mobile devices be used to improve work safety and injury response?” He notes that Personal Lines insurers are taking the lead and cites a few examples. He goes on to offer thoughts and ideas for a workers’ comp mobile initiatives for this “ripe communication channel.”
It’s been about a year since we took the pulse of the workers comp mobile app scene here on Workers’ Comp Insider: Last April, we posted 72 apps for your workers comp, risk management & HR toolbox, and shortly before that, a roundup of risk-related and occupational gizmos & gadgets. (As with all older posts, some links may no longer work, but most appear valid.)
In doing a Google search, we found an excellent post by Michael Allen who apparently has already done some of the heavy lifting for us: Mobile health – 40 “apps” for your workers’ comp team. He lists a variety of apps ranging from workers’ comp medical guidelines, claims-related, medication management, physical therapy, patient education, and Health, Wellness and Comorbidity management apps. (By the way, we’ll be adding his great blog to our sidebar: Tech Talk for Workers’ Comp)
Besides the listings, he offers insight into how many CIOs are building app stores from which employees can download vetted apps. He links to a piece by Clint Boulton in the WSJ about the rise of corporate app stores. Boulton says such stores, “…ensure applications used by employees, particularly those that are using their own devices, meet the company’s security standards.”
So Peter is right on the money (as usual) with his “Workers” Comp App Store” reference.
A further Google search for “OSHA apps” turned up this listing of safety apps using the keyword OSHA; Another search for ADA apps brought these results. A little digging in the “about us” section of Canvas, the site hosting these listings, says that “Canvas makes it easy to publish data collection apps on wireless Smartphones and other mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, bar code scanning devices, and Netbooks.” Among other benefits and services, it also boasts, “Canvas also offers the first mobile business application store of its kind allowing business users to find mobile applications that work on a wide variety of mobile devices, with every application being customizable by Canvas users.”
So if you want to compile a list of trustworthy insurance, business, or workers comp apps for your workforce, this might be a good tool to work with.
Meanwhile, here’s a grab bag of a few workers’ comp or risk related apps we’ve bookmarked for just such a post as this:

Many of the apps we see are ghost towns – few reviews, little traction. Still, we applaud the pioneers for forging the way because in our experience, insurance as an industry is infamous for leading from behind when it comes to adaptation to new technologies.

If you think you are having a bad day, consider the healthcare providers and patients of the Australian Miami Family Medical Center, all of whom have been locked out of medical records. Thousands of patient medical histories, prescriptions, lab test results and health records have been breached, hijacked and encrypted, and are being held for ransom by Russian hackers.
This is not an isolated incident by any means – earlier this year, a small Illinois medical practice was similarly breached with health records stolen, encrypted, for held for ransom. Extortionists also struck Express Scripts a few years ago, threatening exposure of more than 700,000 records.
Not all health data breaches are the result of hackers. In fact, hackers may be the tip of the iceberg. The less dramatic day-today threat of unsecured mobile devices, lost laptops, and disgruntled or dishonest employees likely represents the lion’s share of the breaches — at least at present. And such problems are hardly unique to healthcare – the issue of employees bringing mobile devices into the workplace is a common one, dubbed “bring your own device” or BYOD for short. Security experts quip that it stands for “bring your own danger.”Medical ID Theft
While ransom may not be a particularly successful criminal strategy, the real paydirt might be in medical identity theft. With the high cost of medical care and a proliferation of opioid abuse, medical IDs are increasingly valuable. Thieves can hijack medical identities and health data to file insurance claims or secure medical treatment, prescription drugs and even surgery. On a broader scale, operatives can use medical data to submit false bills to insurers. To add insult to injury, illegal medical transactions may unknowingly be added to patient records, making for inaccuracies and potentially dangerous situations.
People are aware that they could be a victim of financial fraud – medical fraud, not so much. A study by Nationwide Insurance revealed that most people are unaware of the risk of medical ID theft. While people are in the habit of checking financial accounts somewhat regularly, that is often not the case with medical records.Expect growing risk for health data
Experts say that we can expect to see more healthcare breaches ahead – particularly as more records are digitized. A recently released study on patient data security by Poneman/ID Expert reports:

Ninety-four percent of healthcare organizations surveyed suffered at least one data breach; 45 percent of organizations experienced more than five data breaches during the past two years. Data breaches are an ongoing operational risk that could be costing the U.S. healthcare industry an average of $7 billion annually. A new finding indicates that 69 percent of organizations surveyed do not secure medical devices–such as mammogram imaging and insulin pumps–which hold patients’ protected health information

The report paints a picture of an industry that is woefully unprepared to deal with the burgeoning threat. Most organizations surveyed said that they have insufficient resources to prevent and detect data breaches.
In health data breaches involving more than 500 people, HIPAA privacy regulations specify that, in addition to individual notifications, the incident must be reported and made public (See Breach Notification Rule). The US Department of Health & Human Services maintains a database of health data breaches affecting 500+ people – you can check to see if any of your providers are on the list. The Federal Trade Commission offers consumer advice on preventing or recovering from medical identity theft.
Besides individual consumers, employers, insurers and TPAs should be alert for health data fraud and should report any questionable activity. As entities with greater buying power than the average consumer, wholesale buyers can also help manage the risk by requiring adherence to security and privacy standards and having crisis plans in place as part of the RFP or buying process.
Rick Kam, president and co-founder of ID Experts, offers these security tips to healthcare organizations:

Here’s a grab bag of apps for health & safety, human resources, insurance news – and even for ADA job accommodations.EH&S Apps for All Seasons – Occupational Health & Safety compiled apps that have particular relevance to safety, health, and environmental professionals – and risk managers too, we might add. These range from weather and traffic alerts to tools for chemical safety, first aid and emergency response.Top 5 Risk Management Apps – apps for insurance terminology, insurance publications and a mobile flood map.Apps for ADA Accommodations – HR Daily Adisor offers a variety of suggestions from the Job Accommodation Network for apps that address speech, hearing and visual impairment.10 Apps That Can Save a Patient’s Life – Emergency Monthly scoured the MedGadget archives to compile the top 10 smartphone applications that can save a patient’s life … before they get to the emergency department. The 10 apps presented have been grouped into the four primary categories: workflow, emergency response, vitals, and diagnosis.10 Mobile Apps That Promote Safety – SocialTimes offers a roundup of apps covering emergency preparedness, driving safety, alerts, first aid, and medical diagnostics for communications between patients and physicians.In HR? There’s an App for That – a roundup of apps from SHRM for recruiting, analytics, time-and-attendance tracking, performance feedback and more.

Today, we slip back in time to 1925 and put on our Flash Gordon glasses to speculate about the future, a time when a doctor not only “sees what is going on in the patient’s room by means of a television screen” but also employs a robotic-like instrument called the Teledactyl (Tele, far; Dactyl, finger — from the Greek) to “feel at a distance.”

This image and the story comes from a delightful Smithsonian blog called Paleofuture in a post entitled Telemedicine Predicted in 1925. The post discusses an article by Hugo Gernsback that appeared in the February, 1925 issue of Science and Invention. You can read more about the intriguing robotoic Teledactyl device and Gernsback’s predictions for medicine of the future.
Fast forward to 2010, and we see how remarkably prescient Mr. Gernsback’s predictions were. Courtesy of a blog comment by Christoph Hadnagy, we find this link to a New York Times story on Denmark Leads the Way in Digital Care, in which 77-year old patient Jens Danstrup talks about what it’s like to be a telemedicine patient:

“You see how easy it is for me?” Mr. Danstrup said, sitting at his desk while video chatting with his nurse at Frederiksberg University Hospital, a mile away. “Instead of wasting the day at the hospital?”

He clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctors enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.

All of this is possible because Mr. Danstrup lives in Denmark, a country that began embracing electronic health records and other health care information technology a decade ago.

Adoption of Electronic Health Records in the US
The Centers for Disease Control issues an annual survey on the use of electronic health records in physician’s offices. Last year, partly bolstered by meaningful use incentives in the Affordable Care Act, use grew by 6%. Dr. Elliot King blogs on the EHR increase, noting that:

“In 2011, 57 percent of office-based doctors used electronic medical records/electronic health records (EMR/EHR), according to the CDC. That number compares to the 50.7 percent of physicians’ offices using EMR/EHR’s in 2010 and 48.3 percent in 2009.”

Some physicians are also taking to telemedicine via Skype, FaceTime and other video conferencing services. In Doctors who Skype: Renegades or Heroes?, Jean Riggle looks at the pros and cons of video chat as used by physicians. She notes that there currently aren’t any guidelines for electronic communication between physicians and patients and there there are several important questions yet to be solved:

How can these chats be integrated into the patient’s medical record?

Can the actual video be captured and inserted into the record or should a summary of the call suffice?

How should physicians be reimbursed for the time they spend using social media?

From time to time, we like to take a look at the wizardry that is under development in rehabilitative and assistive technologies. What used to be on the order of Flash Gordon type fantasy is now reality within reach. In out first clip, Toyota Unveils Quartet of Healthcare Robots. MedGadget says these four robots are expected to be production ready in 2013. Three are walking assist and balance training robots that would help in patient rehab. The fourth is a patient transfer assist – something we see as very valuable in helping to prevent health care worker injuries.

And while on the topic of lifting aids, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include RIBA, a versatile if somewhat surreal patient care robot.

Finally, we have a Robotic Man’s Best Friend to Guide the Blind. Yes, it may cost a bit more, but think of the savings in dog food. All joking aside, it’s exciting to see these technological advances moving closer to the practical reality of helping people to overcome injuries and disabilities.

We like to keep our eye on advances in rehabilitative and assistive tehnologies, so we were delighted to find one of our favorite inventors and entrepreneurs Dean Kamen showcasing another of his awe-inspiring inventions in a TED talk. Kamen is perhaps most known for the invention of the Segway. We were particularly smitten by his iBOT, a revolutionary stair-climbing wheelchair that allowed the user to raise up on two wheels to be eye level to a standing person. Unfortunately, these went off the market due to cost but you can see the iBOT in action here.
Kamen’s recent invention is the DEKA Arm (or the “Luke Arm”), a highly advanced prosthetic arm which he created for veterans who lost limbs in the war. He tells the fascinating story of the development and shows some of the capabilities in the following TED video. Inspiring and exciting! (You can also view his recent appearance on the Colbert Report and you can read about it at Dean Kamen’s “Luke Arm” Prosthesis Readies for Clinical Trials.)

What? You mean there’s a world beyond insurance?! Here are a few good general business and technology tools and resources we’ve discovered recently.

QuickMBA is an online knowledge resource for business administration operated by the Internet Center for Management and Business Administration, Inc. “Topics are presented as frameworks and summaries in the various subjects of business administration, as taught in the world’s top MBA programs.” (via Noise Between Stations)

Want to see how you compare to others in your industry? Bizstats is a handy business planning tool that presents a collection of useful financial ratios, business statistics & benchmarks, and an effective and understandable online analysis of businesses & industries.

Flummoxed by tech jargon? Held hostage by your technology department? WhatIs? provides definitions for thousands of technology and Web-related terms. Check out the Fast Reference section for some popular tools and topics.